Continuing on our streak of Friday coverage of cool hackerly events, we would like to say a few words on Dorkbot and Artbots. Dorkbot started as a New York City monthly meeting for robot and homebrew interactive device aficionados. It has now spread to many cities, perhaps even one near you. Guests are invited to speak and afterwards, the hardware hackers mix and mingle to the geekery beat. The collection of projects presented in the past are stored on their site with linkage for you to peruse. We at Hack A Day are a bit sad that neither Paris nor Nebraska hosts a monthly Dorkbot. That said, you are invited to start a new Dorkbot chapter near you if you so desire. The next New York City Dorkbot meeting is on Wednesday, October 5th at 7 pm. Check the listings and/or mailing lists for the city nearest you.
As if Dorkbot’s artsy tech scene wasn’t cool enough, once a year Douglas Repetto also organizes Artbots: The Robot Talent Show. We had a chance to attend Artbots 2003 at the Eyebeam Gallery in NYC. Particularly marking that year was Stijn Slabbinck’s scratchbot which has been covered rather extensively elsewhere. LEMUR – the league of electronic musical urban robots — was also in attendance in 2003. This year’s Artbots was held in Dublin, Ireland and included workshops: a MIDI scrapyard challenge and a 60 minute bot building course.
Some of our favorite artist installations from this year’s Artbots include:
“Shockbot Corejulio” by Christian G?r and Emanuel Andel
This machine is built to self-shock itself into creating autonomous art and eventually lead itself to crash:
Amanda Parkes and Jessica Banks created “Curiously Strong“
Our only wish in life is that every single possible geeky use of an altoids tin be exploited, including this “domino talented” setup:
Lara Greene‘s “You Move Me“
This creep-tas-tic human controlled human-like exoskeleton would scare the bejeebus out of us during our midnight fridge runs if it were set up in our home. Luckily “You Move Me” requires eight human operators to be set into motion. Phew.
In conclusion we would like to urge you to participate in a Dorkbot meeting or start your own Dorkbot chapter to share your Hack A Day art skillz. Mad props for the franken-circuit-conceptual art yo.
[all photos courtesy artbots.org website and artists’ personal websites]
first!
for those of you interested in robotics, I cover the news at my site, gorobotics.net
What is it with this first post crap? Leave the slashdot nerds where they are.
sry about the first post thing, i was just in absolute shock that noone had posted yet.
Yeah, I agree–“first post”-posts are getting ye olde. No offense.
On a much lighter note, that “You Move Me” thing looks really cool, even if it is creepy. Also, you live in Paris, Fabienne? That’s a long ways away, especially from Alaska–practically the complete other side of the globe. Wow.
Anyhow.
6th.